Simple is the Reason of My Heart

Official Reply from Government on the Proposal

For those who wonder about the progress of the proposal, Ms Bhavani from MICA representing the Minister of Information, Communication and the Arts have responded to us on the proposals and said that they will review the suggestions made on the proposals. There is a ST report "Government looking at Lighter Touch"  by Zakir Hussain narrating about the responses between MICA and the bloggers on the proposal. The engagement between MICA and us has been cordial and positive and that's a good starting point for proper debate in our society. From reading the response, my opinion is that they would at least review what we have proposed.  We have to wait and see what their eventual policy decisions may be, given that the report by Advisory Council on the Impact  of  New Media on Society (AIMS) is about to be submitted. In any case, both groups (the bloggers and AIMS) have been in contact, and have exchanged notes among each other through various closed door sessions on regulation issues in Institute of Policy Studies or private emails. Meanwhile, check out Alex's article on "The pigeons are among us already", Clarissa Onn's "Bureaucratic ambiguity and Internet freedom" and Mohan's "Maintaining Racial and Religious Harmony through Criminal Law". The full text for official email reply can be found in E-Jay's SGPoilitics.net. I have attached a copy here.

The Geek Goddess Show finally launched in Podfire

Finally, after a few months of procrastination, planning and production, together with Michael Cheng, Estee Teo and Peter Du, we have finally launched the first episode of "The Geek Goddess Show" into cyberspace through Podfire.sg. Geek Goddess came about through a conversation between Michael and I that we should do a tech show which features the internet trends in Asia (similar to CommandN and Geek Brief). So, we put it to test and we are thankful to have Estee and Peter to come onboard as the stars for the show. Doing a videocast is definitely more challenging because it takes usually ten times the effort to produce the amount of footage that will finally become what we made of the show. At the moment, I prefer to take a hobbyist approach on this new project (unlike what I do with investing and incubating interactive digital media start-ups in Thymos Capital LLP).  After looking at the final product, I still think that there are lots to improve. Finally I am really glad and thankful to my friends (Paddy, DK, Nicole, Gwen, Jean, Ridz, Daniel & Fairnelli from Tech65, Reuben, Daryl Tay, Min-Tea, Daphne Maia, Nadnut, Claudia, Kien Lee, Tianhong, Joanna, Shannon, Jarius, Damien, Shaun and many others whom I might fail to mention) who attend the soft launch of Podfire yesterday to offer their support and encouragement. Also congrats to the other 2 shows Blogger's Treat (Aaron and Sabrina) and Channel 65 that are featured yesterday. Oh yes, I have placed the show in this post (Check out the production notes from Estee's perspective), do check it out. :)

Proposals for Internet Freedom in Singapore

The paper "Proposals for Internet Freedom in Singapore" is now submitted to Dr Lee Boon Yang, the Minister for Information, Communication and the Arts. For those who want to a download of the paper, you can download it from here. As spoken earlier, it will be great to hear more feedback from fellow bloggers. 

Community Moderation as an alternative to Internet Regulation in Singapore

Community moderation is an alternative solution to Internet regulation as compared to the heavy hand approach adopted by the authorities (particularly in clamping down matters with law enforcement too quickly). I sketch out a few arguments to support the advocacy of this solution and present the summary of the proposals by the group of 15 bloggers led by Alex Au and Choo Zheng Xi who will be submitting a set of recommended proposals to the Minister for Information, Communication and the Arts within the next few days on the subject of Internet regulation. 

Google Apps Engine and it's Web 2.5 significance

Last week, during the Singapore PHP User Group, the developers from Ruby, PHP and Python groups were brimmed with excitement of a news from Google. The  story is that Google has launched a preview release of the Google App Engine.  Of course, the news and blogs are littered with comments on the significance of this new move. It also further boosts the idea of the web as a platform paradigm (some have coined this as web 2.5).  The idea of a platform-as-a-service providers is to allow developers in creating and distributing Web applications via the cloud and for users to consume them on any digital device (that can connect quickly to the web), anytime and anywhere. Google has been late on this, given that Facebook (and other social networks such as Friendster) and Apple (with the iPhone) have already started moving into the space quickly. How will this impact the developers and consumers out there?

HP 2133 Mini-Note PC Review

It has been great to be attending the Mini-Note’s Singapore launch in Mezza9 bar, Hyatt Hotel. The event is organized by HP together with Waggener Edstrom, a PR Agency. Thanks to Melvin Yuan, it is an interesting that brings together many technology bloggers to review this new HP 2133 Mini-Note PC which was unveiled in Engadget two days back. It adds to the other mini PCs, for example, Macbook Air, Asus Eee PC and OLPC and the competition for consumers to purchase mini PCs of such form factors below US$500 (other than the Macbook Air which commands a higher price) is now beginning to take shape in the months ahead. Here is what I think about the product after getting the chance to preview the product that will be coming out in May. (Updated on 12 April 2008 with video made by Miccheng and Tech65).